and, withal, in the determination to work out a
permanent partnership on the new basis of equality--this is the most
wonderful story political annals have to tell. The British Empire of
to-day, tested in fire and not found wanting, is the paradox and
miracle of political achievement, full of hope for the future of the
rest of the world. In shaping the policy which made the continuance
and growth and adjustment of the Empire possible, Canadian statesmen of
both parties played a leading part. That {128} long story cannot here
be told, but a few of the significant steps must be recalled, to make
clear the development of yesterday and to-day.

In the expansion of Europe over all the five continents and the seven
seas which has marked the past five centuries, the Englishman found a
roomy place in the sun. By luck or pluck, by trusted honesty or
sublime assurance, and with little aid from his government, he soon
outdistanced Frenchman and Dutchman, Spaniard and Portuguese, in the
area and richness of the regions over which his flag floated and in
which his trading-posts or his settlements were established. This
empire was ruled, as other colonial domains were ruled, to advance the
power and the profit of the motherland. The colonies and dependencies
were plantations, estates beyond the seas, to be acquired and guarded
for the gain of the mother country. They were encouraged by bounty and
preference to grow what the mother country needed, and were compelled
by parliamentary edict to give the mother country a monopoly of their
markets for all she made. Great Britain never applied these doctrines
with the systematic rigour of the Spaniard of the seventeenth century
or the German of the twentieth, but monopoly of {129} the direct trade
with the colonies, and the political subordination of the colonies to
secure this end, were nevertheless the cardinal doctrines of imperial
policy.

[Illustration: SIR WILFRID LAURIER From a photograph by Topley]

Slowly this old colonial system broke down. It became impossible to
keep in political subjection millions of men across the seas of the
same vigorous race. This the American Revolution drove home and the
Canadian insurrections of 1837 again made unmistakable. In the views
of most men it came to appear unprofitable, even if possible.
Gradually the ideas of Adam Smith and Pitt and Huskisson, of Cobden and
Bright and Peel, took possession of the English mind. Trade
monopolies,